Leon Chirastes. Klaive knew the name, if only by reputation. Once one of the greatest of the Synod, talked of as a possible delegate to the Council of Cardinals on Terra, a driven man with a reputation for decisive martial action. Decades ago, it had seemed possible he would come to dominate the politics of the Church, only for his flame to suddenly gutter out, as if extinguished by some vengeful, hidden fist.

  ‘Then I am glad to be here to witness your action, my lord,’ he said, not having to feign his eagerness this time. ‘Thank the Throne you have arrived to take him to safety.’

  At that, Orquemond smiled again, though this time with even less evident humour. He stared up at the viewscreens, a hard expression on his hard face.

  ‘Take him to safety?’ he asked. ‘No, I do not think you understand, confessor. We are not here to evacuate him. Chirastes is a renegade, one who has jeopardised a century’s worth of careful labour in pursuit of his own private obsession. I am here to punish him. Even now my troops are closing in, preparing to bring him back to me in chains. I plan to look into his eyes as I pass judgement. I plan to discover the full extent of the damage he has done before I end him, here, on this ship.’

  Klaive didn’t know what to say to that. He just stood, stupidly, following the cardinal’s gaze as the viewscreens ticked over with fresh evidence of combat. This was a surprise. It made things more precarious. He needed to think, to plan again, and hope he hadn’t incriminated himself already.

  ‘He is defending what remains of his kingdom,’ Orquemond went on. ‘The extraction is taking longer than I’d hoped, despite the resources expended on it. Still, there are only two outcomes now. Either my troops detain him within the current standard hour, enabling the Emperor’s Justice to be served in person, or I shall light the orbital lasers and destroy the city from here.’

  Jorundur kept the drives at full burn, angling and tilting to evade the worst of the beating that he was being handed. Every passing minute brought another echoing smack that made the combat-lumens shake. His void coverage was down to minimal now, meaning that a solid hit from virtually anything would strip them of the last protection they could rely on.

  He was so focused on the flight for survival that he barely noticed Bjargborn’s return to his station, reeling across the listing deck and throwing himself into his throne.

  ‘Close augurs back online!’ the rivenmaster shouted.

  ‘That fool’s launched himself out of a pod-tube, then?’ Jorundur asked.

  ‘He believed he could overtake the prisoner, lord,’ Bjargborn replied, swivelling on his throne’s supports and patching in a fresh tracker.

  ‘He’ll do nothing but blow himself to Morkai’s kingdom,’ Jorundur sighed. ‘Try to locate the pod, if you can.’

  The Amethyst Suzeraine dived down steeply, heading towards the nadir of the battle-sphere, before pulling out and twisting away to port, barely evading the latest salvo from the death’s-head battle cruiser. The distance between the two ships was now very tight – soon they would be out of space to make any kind of useful evasions.

  ‘Broadcast Imperial idents on all open channels,’ Jorundur ordered to his comms staff, who were proving slow to react in the absence of Suaka. ‘I want that Church battleship to know just who we are.’

  The Ecclesiarchy squadron was right up ahead now, ringed with its concentric circles of fire, rocked by the volume of incoming ordnance but still doling out plenty of its own. Despite everything going on around it, it hadn’t moved at all – just weathered the storm. That felt strange. Even if it was here for an evacuation, it could have pulled up higher, maintaining comms, keeping itself intact and ready for a fast system exit. For some reason, the captain was maintaining station, just where he had been when he’d fired the initial orbital laser barrage.

  Still, that made things a little easier for him, at least. A few hundred miles less to survive before they put things to the test.

  ‘Gunnery deck, I need maximum spread, full complement aft,’ he voxed. ‘What can you give me?’

  ‘Reloading, lord!’ came the frantic reply from the lower decks. In the background, Jorundur could hear the echoing booms of the breeches closing. ‘Aiming to deliver volley within twenty seconds!’

  That might well be too long. ‘Make it ten. Your target vectors have been dispatched.’

  Jorundur glanced at the ranged tactical lens. The death’s-head battle cruiser was coming about again, aiming to cut them off from their ­escape route. It was going for broke now, flaying its drives to get into strike position. Ahead and above were the bellies of the Ecclesiarchy ships, domi­nated by the vast hull of the battleship itself. They were dark against the distant void, lit into silhouettes by the firestorms around them.

  ‘Old Dog!’ came the crackling voice of Hafloí over the comm. He was barely audible, his words a hiss of static amid the roar of interference.

  ‘You damned fool!’ Jorundur thundered. ‘Where in Hel are you? Get back on board before I–’

  ‘Too late,’ came the reply. ‘Managed to… lower decks, somewhere… no tactical, but flew blind for a… voids down, got inside, now… aim to get to bridge.’

  Before Jorundur could reply, the gunnery master succeeded in launching his volley, and a brace of shells flew aft, targeted at the death’s head’s prow as it turned. The intention was not to cripple it – they had no power for that, now – but to signal to the observers on the Immaculate Destiny where their allegiance was.

  The shells impacted, mangling the pursuer’s voids for a moment or two and jolting it off course by a mark.

  ‘You’re on the Church ship?’ Jorundur demanded, pulling up the damage reports as he reset the Amethyst Suzeraine’s trajectory again. Now it was about speed.

  ‘… lower decks, I think. Smells… yes, it’s bad. Going… main bridge level.’

  ‘All engines, maximum burst!’ Jorundur called out to Bjargborn. ­‘Hammer them, everything we have, and ignore the tolerances.’

  The ship responded instantly, leaping as if kicked. They surged up towards the Ecclesiarchy squadron, ignoring the hits they took, no time left for evasive action, just thundering to the goal as if all the hounds of Hel were on their heels. As they went, the tactical alerts all went red.

  ‘Massive power build-up reported!’ Bjargborn shouted. ‘They’ve got their shot!’

  ‘Outrun it!’ growled Jorundur, gripping the arms of the throne. The Ecclesiarchy ships were just spitting distance away – in a second the Amethyst Suzeraine would be beyond them, screened by their huge rows of active guns. ‘Blood of Russ, move!’

  Then the void went white. The full barrage loosed – a colossal, rolling, eye-burning wall of neon that flooded every oculus and overloaded the few augurs that had staggered back up to full capacity. For a moment even Jorundur winced, his eyes closing, his fists clenching. The impact would be horrendous – it would crunch the hull inward and shear the last of the void shield units from their moorings, even if they were lucky.

  But it never hit. The barrage had been real enough, but it hadn’t come from the death’s head – it had come from four of the Ecclesiarchy escorts, all firing in concert. The Amethyst Suzeraine slingshotted under their formation, darting like a thrown bolas across their displacement shadow.

  Ice and iron, thought Jorundur grudgingly. That had been an incred­ible shot, exceptionally orchestrated.

  ‘Now bring us up, slow us down,’ he ordered, switching to the rear sensors. ‘Keep us on the far side of those gunlines.’

  The traitor battle cruiser had been savaged, caught in a crossfire of expertly deployed lance strikes. Its spine was broken, the grinning skull-face across its prows cracked into pieces. Gas vented all along its blackened length, punctuated by internal explosions. Even as Jorundur watched, it began to lose power, falling away towards Ojada’s gravity well. Its hunt was over.

  On another day, he might have thought of that as an unworthy kill, rely­ing on the firepower of a doubtful ally rather than take on the enemy alone. But then, his ship was a stolen rust-hulk, a pirate’s plaything turned into a half-serious warship at best, and the real objective lay on the planet below, so there was a limit to how bad he could feel about it.

  A coded hail came in to the throne’s private lens, shunted up from the ship’s main receiver matrix.

  ‘Unidentified privateer,’ it read, marked at the top with Ecclesiarchy runes. ‘Maintain your distance and heading, do not interfere with our deployment. Come within strike range, and the next volley will be for you.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Jorundur said to himself, calculating the vectors to comply. All he wanted to do now was shelter for a moment in their shadow, using their bulk and prowess to keep them all alive just a little longer. ‘Shipmaster, ensure we maintain relative position. Inform me at once if you pick up another targeting lock.’

  And then he was back to Hafloí, trying to raise his locator amid a welter of interference.

  ‘Whelp!’ he shouted down the link, not entirely sure he had been heard. ‘Do not attempt to locate the rat! You hear me? Stay where you are, or get off that damn ship! We need its guns, we need its eyes elsewhere. I don’t care about Klaive, just do nothing to make them angry!’

  It wasn’t clear whether any of that had got through. Jorundur glanced up at the realviewers, over to where the vast shadow of the battleship hung in the void. He thought of Hafloí crawling around in its bilges, and shuddered. Damn Blood Claws – more bone in their heads than brains.

  ‘How are our augurs?’ he asked Bjargborn.

  ‘Partial recovery, lord,’ came the reply. ‘A few systems knocked out during the run in, but I’m working on them.’

  ‘Can you raise the vaerangi yet?’

  ‘Working on it, lord.’

  Then Jorundur slumped back in the throne, watching the orbital battle rage around them. For the moment, he’d done what he needed to – they were in the lee of a greater power, shielded from the worst of the storm. He was under no illusion that the respite was anything less than temporary – more predators were out there, and in numbers that would overwhelm even the battleship above them – but all Gunnlaugur had asked for was a little time.

  He couldn’t take his eyes off the Immaculate Destiny. It still hadn’t moved, not an inch, even as the tempest raged around it. That bothered him. And the more he looked, the more he was bothered.

  ‘Why so static, then?’ he murmured, drumming his fingers on the throne’s arm. ‘What am I missing, here?’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Gunnlaugur broke into the command centre, vaulting up the last of the stairs and bursting through an already wrecked doorway. As he crossed the threshold, he seamlessly switched to his bolter, a move ­Ingvar ­silently echoed.

  The centre was a large hexagonal space, more than forty yards in ­diameter, near the very summit of the observation tower, its walls floor-to-ceiling armaglass. A central column dominated, ringed with display lenses and clicking sensor banks. Spiral stairs led up to a higher level, screened by metal-mesh panels. The decking was thick ferrocrete, utilitarian and blast-resistant. The external firestorm howled around them, making the structure creak, pressing against the glass as if trying to force its way in.

  Bodies were everywhere, broken across cogitator housings, twisting into the gaps between equipment racks. Most were in the crimson livery of the armsmen, a few wore black cara­pace plate. Las scorches marked every surface, leaving long streak-patterns across the glass and plasteel. Now there could be no doubt – they were fighting each other. The armsmen were trying to get to the foot of the stairs, the more heavily armoured troops were trying to stop them. Numbers were against the defenders – only four of them remained, crouching low on the screened inside curve of the stairwell, versus more than thirty of the armsmen, huddled in the lee of overturned desk-units and sensor stations, ready to burst out for the final push.

  In the face of that, Gunnlaugur hesitated, just for a microsecond. He took in the pattern of the carapace-units on the defenders, the silver lining on every plate, the twin powerblades that they each carried, the close-faced helms that gave nothing away, the tiny golden-cherub icons lodged on their right breast.

  ‘Clear them all out,’ he growled, opening up with his bolter.

  Ingvar joined him, and together they sprayed mass-reactive shells across the entire breadth of the chamber. The percussive stream blew the housings apart, punched through the armaglass, cut up the armsmen’s flak-plate, blasted the deck-plates into powdery chunks. The Space Wolves ran straight through the explosive blooms, making for the stairs amid the chorus of cut-short screams and secondary detonations.

  Unprepared, the armsmen were cut down in the first wave. The exposed carapace-plate guards did little better – three were blown off their feet as the shells hit, smacked back into the central column before the explosions shredded them open. By the time Gunnlaugur reached the spiral stairs, only one remained, reeling from the shock waves and scrambling for shelter. Gunnlaugur snapped off a final shot, aimed at his head.

  He evaded it. Somehow, moving faster than any of the others had, the sable warrior dropped to one side, letting the bolt fly past his helm to ­impact on the plasteel casing. Then he was up again, blades in both hands, launching himself at the Wolf Guard. Gunnlaugur swung the bolter at him heavily, aiming to crunch his helm-face inward, but the warrior moved too fast again, ducking under the swipe and flickering his blades up into Gunnlaugur’s midriff.

  Gunnlaugur twisted away, out of the path of one cutting edge, but the second sliced into his armour, biting an inch deep as the energy field flared. He spun back to punch into the warrior’s face, but his helm blew apart as Ingvar’s bolt-shell speared through it.

  ‘Slowing down, vaerangi?’ Ingvar asked, amused.

  Gunnlaugur, spattered with gore and armour-pieces, spat out a curse, shoving the headless body aside. In truth, he hadn’t been slow – the warrior had been fast. Extremely fast, more so than any unaugmented human body had a right to be. ‘What are these things?’ he growled, vaulting up the stairs.

  ‘I’ve seen their sigil before,’ said Ingvar, racing up after him. ‘When all this started.’

  They ran up the spiral stair, boots clanging on the plasteel treads, before emerging into a large, high-roofed chamber, now right at the very top of the tower.

  It was different to all the others, as dark as the interior of a chapel. The deck was circular, the windows narrow slits. The floor was thickly carpeted, the walls were hung with drapes. Its ceiling was vaulted in the Imperial gothic style, and granite statues of saints stood in shadowy alcoves, lit by the guttering light of racked candles. A huge altar stood on the far side of the room. It looked rare and expensive – the kind of thing you might find in the heart of a cathedral on a shrine world, not on an industrial planet on the edge of destruction. Bookcases lined the walls, each of them stuffed with reams of leather-bound tomes. Opposite the altar, close to where the Space Wolves had emerged, stood another statue – an idealised cherub, cast in pure gold, carrying a sheave of arrows in its youthful hand.

  The place was bizarre. The internal fashioning was mostly orthodox Imperial cult, but interspersed with strange objects – xenos artefacts, archeo­tech held in glittering stasis fields, hololith recordings playing softly, over and over. Weapons hung in the gloomy recesses. Some of those looked very old. A disturbing number of them seemed to be of Fenrisian origin. Indeed, the more Gunnlaugur looked, the more artefacts from Fenris he saw – armour-pieces, nameplates from Chapter warships, rune-tablets and animal totems locked in glass cabinets. It was as if the place were some kind of esoteric collector’s den, a grim museum of plunder, all fused with the austere iconography of the Ecclesiarchy.

  A man knelt before the altar. He was powerfully built, clad in robes of black and silver that pooled around him. A second figure, a woman in similar black-and-silver garb, stood next to him carrying a long cere­monial sword. Ingvar and Gunnlaugur trained their bolters, one for each, but neither fired. From below, the only sounds filtering up were the whine of the wind and the muffled crackle of distant fires. Fighting still raged in the compound outside, but for the moment the four of them were alone in the chamber.

  ‘Get up,’ said Gunnlaugur.

  The woman looked at him. For a moment, the man didn’t move. Gunnlaugur edged to his left, getting a better view, and saw that he was praying, his lips moving soundlessly. Once the kneeling figure had completed whatever ritual he was engaged in, his eyes opened. He slowly got to his feet, placing a hand on the floor to steady himself, breathing heav­ily. He turned, adjusting his robes over his broad frame. When he caught sight of the two of them, his face registered a brief flicker of surprise.

  ‘You,’ he murmured, then smiled wryly. ‘Perhaps, though, it had to be.’

  The woman looked old, or maybe ill. She had a slim figure that the black robes hung loosely from. Her long hair was pulled back from her face, making her profile severe. The sword she carried was more relic than weapon, and she did not look capable of wielding it in more than a token fashion.

  The man’s skin was a dark bronze-brown, his eyes blue. His hair was cut short against his scalp, exposing old scars across his forehead, the back of his neck. He wore the chasuble and stole of a high priest of the Imperial cult, though not in any colours Gunnlaugur had ever observed before. Every piece of fabric in the place was glossy black and silver, a combination that shimmered strangely in the candlelight.

 

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